Art Faculty Create New Public Installation for Uptown’s Truist Center Plaza

Gracing Truist Center Plaza on Tryon Street is a new art installation created collaboratively by two UNC Charlotte art professors. “Interwoven,” by Thomas Schmidt and Erik Waterkotte, is a printed, site-specific mural that adorns the existing panels of  the Truist Center building design visible from the plaza and ­­the tower above in the heart of uptown Charlotte.

Schmidt and Waterkotte received the commission from Hodges Taylor Art Consultancy, on behalf of Truist Bank, in the summer of 2023.

“The client was interested in representing local artists and building a connection with UNC Charlotte through this project,” Schmidt said.

As they developed their ideas, the artists took inspiration from the art nouveau design of the Truist Center, the history of Charlotte’s textile industry, and the rolling landscape of North Carolina’s Piedmont. They used high-tech digital 3D modeling to generate patterns and imagery, playing with layering to achieve a moiré optical effect.

“Over the following year, we developed several design iterations and printing proofs, responding to feedback to refine the final outcome,” Schmidt said.

The result is a “twisting, dimensional graphic pattern,” drawn from ornamentation on the Truist Center façade, that evokes the patterns of woven fiber.

Waterkotte, who is an associate professor of print media, devoted hours and hours “to developing subtle color variations and layered effects, which were essential to achieving the vibrant result we ultimately reached,” Schmidt said.

The color palette for “Interwoven” draws directly from the stone, metal, and brick materials found throughout the plaza, the artists’ statement explains. “Each graphic layer is intentionally offset from the others, generating an optical vibration that reflects the vibrancy of the site’s materials and history.”

The mural was printed on durable vinyl, Schmidt said, and applied to the architectural overhang above the plaza. It was installed by Peter Caple of Evergreen Creative Projects at the end of 2024.

Schmidt, who is an associate professor of interdisciplinary 3D art, explores the intersection of craft, materiality, and digital technology through his research and creative practice. In 2024 he created and installed a large-scale work in the Duke Energy Plaza. Waterkotte’s research areas include print, paper, sustainability, and religion.  In 2023 he was the visiting professor of printmaking at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art & Design in Wrocław, Poland. He currently serves as the associate chair of the Department of Art & Art History.

“We’re both most proud of how we were able to bring our complementary skills together into a cohesive, unified vision,” Schmidt said of their recent collaboration. “The final project truly reflects a blend of our individual approaches, and we’re especially pleased with how the mural resonates with the architecture, materials, and identity of the site.”